About Me

Thursday, January 21, 2010

The mythological beasts are really shaping up. Many students have done an amazing job of using photographs for inspiration. Everyone is using their imaginations to picture what sort of habitat these chimeras would feel at home in, and I'm seeing a lot of really well-drawn backgrounds.

We've talked a bit about how Roman artists tried to represent space in their compositions. Linear perspective wasn't invented until the Renaissance, so Romans used size, placement, and overlapping to show distance. Larger objects that are positioned nearer to the bottom of the page appear closer to the viewer; objects that are partly covered by other objects, that are positioned closer to the top of the page, or that are drawn smaller seem further away. 6th grade students are now using horizon lines to show where their creatures are located in the landscape.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

THE KHIMAIRA (or Chimera) was a monstrous beast which ravaged the countryside of Lykia in Anatolia. It was a composite creature, with the body and maned head of a lion, a goat's head rising from its back, a set of goat-udders, and a serpentine tail.

The hero Bellerophon was commanded to slay it by King Iobates. He rode into battle against the beast on the back of the winged horsePegasos and, driving a lead-tipped lance down the Khimaira's flaming throat, suffocated it.

The Khimaira may have once been identified with the winter-rising Constellation Capricorn (the serpent-tailed goat). The constellation Pegasos appears to drive her from the heavens in spring.

Late classical writers represent the beast as a metaphor for a Lycian volcano.

The Khimaira may have symbolised the cold of winter: her fire-breathing lion-head representing frost, her goat-head the storms of winter (aigis in Greek means both goatish and storm), and her serpentine-head winter sickness. Khimaira's name appears to be derived from the Greek words kheima (cold, frost, winter) and aera (air). The father of Khimaira was Typhoeus the Daemon of deadly, winter-storms and her mother was Ekhidna a Daemon of illness and disease. In the popular myth, her opponent Pegasos has a place amongst the stars as the spring-rising constellation Pegasus. Conversely, the Khimaira may have been represented by constellation Capricorn (the serpent-tailed goat), whose rising heralded the onset of winter.

A Greco-Roman mosaic recently unearthed in Syria indicates that the famous medieval scene of St George and the Dragon was derived from ancient Greco-Roman depictions of Bellerophon spearing the Khimaira from the back of Pegasos.

MAKE YOUR OWN CHIMERA

Although the chimera has mythological roots, the word is now used to mean a fabulous beast made up of parts taken from various animals. You will create your own unique chimera. There are several steps to this project.

Step 1: Texture Hunt. Texture is a word that refers to the qualities of surfaces. Real texture can be felt with the hand. Apparent texture is how artists use two dimensional media to make a flat surface seem like it has texture. Textures can be rough, smooth, furry, scaly, glossy, bumpy...

You need a sheet of plain white paper folded to make sixteen equal boxes, and a wooden pencil. Walk around the school. In every other box on your paper, take rubbings, using the side of your pencil tip. Write a word or two at the bottom of each rubbing to remind yourself of where the texture came from: for example, "carpet," "brick," etc. You will end up with a paper that has eight different textures with blank boxes next to them.

Step 2: Show your skills! In the empty boxes, use line to reproduce the textures you collected as best you can. These look better the more time you spend on them. Exaggerate the textures to make interesting patterns.

Step 3: Monster baby. What three animals (or insects) will you use to make your chimera? List them.

_______________________ _______________________ _____________________

Step 4: Draw. On a new sheet of plain white paper, very lightly sketch your chimera. Will it have bat wings? Fish scales? Chicken legs? An elephant's trunk? It's up to you.

Step 5: Texturize! Go back to your texture hunt sheet. Use all eight of your copied textures to create patterns on your chimera. You can use colored pencils if you like, or you can choose to keep it black and white.

Step 6: Name that beast. Write the name of your new chimera somewhere on the front of your drawing.

Extra Credit: Write a poem about your chimera. It can explain how the beast came to exist, or tell a story about things it's done. Maybe it's a riddling beast, like the Sphinx, or a magical helper, like the Pegasus. Perhaps it guards a particular place, like Cerberus. You decide!

Friday, January 15, 2010

Project: After learning about Roman art and culture and looking at many examples of Roman mosaics, students designed their own. They cut colored paper into small squares, or tesserae, and glued the tesserae down to form pictures of fish, monsters, other animals, people, and any other subject that the ancient Romans might have depicted.

Homework due Tuesday, 1/19: complete mosaics. Bring in contact sheets and any art supplies not checked on Friday.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

It's a new year and time for an exciting new unit in Fine Arts: Ancient Rome! You all know a lot about Roman culture and history already, so we're going to focus on art, architecture, and poetry.

Today's classwork: We read the course overview for the semester, then looked at some images of artwork on a projection and talked about Rome. The Romans took a lot from the Greeks, especially when it comes to sculpture and architecture. But they were also very practical and invented a lot of building techniques that made life in Roman cities more pleasant: running water, sewers, hot baths, and big public spaces for politics and entertainment.

Homework: none tonight

Due dates: Friday, 1/15 - turn in completed contact sheet and bring all art supplies to be checked.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Classwork: students finished, or attempted to finish, their Greek pottery-style drawings today. These are looking beautiful! Some are checking out markers over the weekend; please make sure they are returned on Monday.

Homework: Read Study Guide and write down any questions for Monday. We will go over questions about the final exam, take home old artwork, and finish the figure pieces.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

The exam is divided into four parts, one per Fine Arts subject area. Here's what you should know for each part.

I. Poetry

In this section, you'll be asked to list some terms and examples of how you would use them in your writing. You'll also write some poetry.

Know the different types of figurative language and how to use each one. These include: alliteration, onomanopoeia, simile, metaphor, hyperbole, and personification.

Know the rhythm and rhyme schemes of haiku (17 total syllables, 5/7/5, no rhyme) and limericks (AABBA rhyme scheme). Know what a rhyming couplet is and how to write one. Know what a stanza is.

II. Music

Think back on the different activities we did during the music unit. We watched some video from the documentary "Music From the Inside Out;" took a listening walk around the school; listened to, discussed, wrote about, and made music maps charting different selections of recorded music; clapped and made rhythmic noises together, created our own rhythms and instruments, and learned about graphic scores. Know your vocabulary from this unit:

This section is mostly performance tasks - things you already know how to do, for which you will need to remember proper vocabulary. You will most likely spend the greatest amount of time on this section, since you will be asked to do some drawing. You should know:

We've done two types of drawing from life: contour and gesture. Know the difference.

IV. Drama

You'll need to remember a lot of vocabulary for this section. It's all words that we used all the time in drama. You will be asked to fill in the blanks of a story about directing a play with the appropriate words, and occasionally to write short answers responding to questions about the story.

Review terms from the Greek Tragedy unit as well. Know the parts of a Greek theatre (orchestra, parodos, theatron, skene) as well as the parts of a Greek tragedy (prologue, parodos, episode, stasimon, exodos). Review your notes on the essential elements of Greek tragedy, including late pont of attack, tragic hero, tragic flaw, chorus, masks, etc. I know you know this!

Students handed in their rough sketches and started working on their final drawings on red construction paper. I was so impressed by how well everyone has been working today - every person spent the entire period drawing. We went over some tips and tricks for proportion and started using the black permanent markers.